Effective

Chapter 4The Second Floor of Your Effectiveness Architecture: People and Technology

The two things that help you most at work—and drive you the craziest—aren’t anything new.

Working with people? Working with technology? Folks were doing that back in the Pleistocene epoch.

Consider early Homo Sapiens hunting a deer. They’re using spears constructed from sticks and jagged rocks¹—technology—and they’re working as a group with differently articulated roles—collaboration among people.²

Intriguingly, humans are actually built to collaborate: we’re one of the few species that have uniformly white sclera (literally, the white of the eye). Having a white sclera allows you to signal where you’re looking to someone else without making a sound—a critical skill during a multi-person hunt.³ We’re designed to achieve better outcomes by working together.

Tools and collaboration kept us alive back then, and they sustain us now.

Just because something is vital, though, doesn’t mean it’s easy or straightforward. In this chapter we’ll explore what it means to have strengths in the People and Technology areas of our Effectiveness Architecture—but also what’s tough, or prone to disruption, in each.

Let’s start with People. With my white sclera, I’m silently signaling you to look that way!

People: The Catalyst

One in seven people told us that their co-workers were driving them berserk.

Let me back up.

In April 2025, in conjunction with a former co-worker of mine, Patrick Hyland, PhD (who did not ...